Overnight in the Lab

[Guest Natalie Harris]

Natalie looked up from the microviewer, blinking a few times to clear her eyes an return them to seeing the normal worl, not incredibly magnified blood samples. This kin of analysis was tiring work, and even worse on the eyes. A dozen hours looking at slides would give anyone a headache.

 

What she was learning was worth the eyestrain, though. Alexei - Dr. Juno - had done admirable work in isolating the genetic material in the samples from the planet .What he had been able to ascertain was that three strands of DNA apparently belonging to as many different species were present among the samples. One was fairly obiously human. Italian human, too. That was a coincidence that Natalie was *sure* was bound to happen by chance. Parallel planetary development *and* parallel genome markers, right down to locality. Riiiiight.

 

But she was letting herself mentally digress. There were two other pieces of genetic material present in their sample that were decidedly not human, though certainly *humanoid*. The first, which had been absent in one sample, Alexei had reasoned was local, native to this planet. Natalie didn't see any reason to disagree with that. She was no geneticist, but it seemed like the strands of DNA had been introduced a good deal earlier in the family tree in both cases - six and three generations prior, to be specific. based on her limited understanding of the Romans' social hierarchy, she was intereste in seeing if samples from slaves and "freedmen" like the away team's hostess at the party would indicated higher concentration of that first "rogue" DNA, suggesting that the "native" species had indeed become enslaved upon the Roman "occupation".

 

As far as the third, so-called "flawless" material, was concerned, that puzzled the doctor a bit more. That *had* to have been introduced deliberately, but how was more mysterious. It seemed to have been fully, no, perfectly integrated into the genome, but... that level of expertise took conscious genetic, scientific engineering. Genetic engineering that boggled Natalie's little doctor-mind to contemplate. And, certainly it was genetic engineering that was far beyond any acumen in the areas that the Romans had ever shown. No. They couldn't have done that themselves.

 

Once they had permission to start moving around the populace again, Natalie planned on recommending that a much larger study group be assembled. More data were needed, though she didn't doubt that they would support Dr. Juno's hypothesis.

 

For now, though, Natalie needed something to occupy her that wasn't genetic modeling and natural factors in genome evolution. Breakfast, for example, was at the top of her list in candidates, and until the doctors had more data to play with, she saw nothing keeping her from a fresh plate of pancakes.